I recall some people wrote they were looking forward for Citra to have TAS tools, so they could try Resident Evil: Mercs 3D. So, here we have TAS tools in Citra. Where are all these people with their articles and WIPs?
Alright. So, if you like RE4 or RE5 Mercenaries, then here is a lenient game for you. Well, sorta lenient.
Goals
Even though, the game has no storyline, there are 2 main goals for beating the game:
- complete all regular missions (1-1 through 5-5);
- complete all missions (1-1 through 5-5, and EX-1 - EX-9).
And also such landmarks as New Game+ and all missions SS ranks.
New Game+ is beating each mission in the fastest possible time using the best character and set of skills.
Missions
There are 2 types of missions in the game.
Regular missions have different objectives. You should kill a specific amount of zombies, kill all zombies, survive waves (or let the time reach zero), kill a boss. Plus, some of them involve extra conditions or changed scripts.
EX missions are basically regular Mercenaries from RE4 and RE5 with bosses, time chests and timers. Basically, you just need to play for a given time without doing anything to increase it.
Mission rank depends on your score, which is calculated by a specific unknown formula which includes:
- enemies killed,
- maximum combo,
- the remaining time on the clock when a mission is over,
- (maybe) you accuracy.
TAS is usually able to beat most missions with SS rank, but some missions rely on remaining time too much. Would be great to have some kind of a spreadsheet with scores and ranks. It's not a good idea to beat each mission twice with and without timers.
Aiming and Camera
Note: The game works at 30 FPS. When I mention control directions for 1 frame, I actually mean 2 frames: one frame which reads the input and one blank frame.
The control is the similar to elder parts, but it takes one step back comparing to RE4. Unlike Gamecube or PS2 control, you use
Circle Pad only for aiming, which makes it more difficult and uncomfortable.
Camera moves in any direction by swiping the touchscreen in range of ~90 degrees from its idle perspective. You can point it to any spot you want, but in the TAS you have to swing from one corner to another one to make it move faster.
When you hold R, you start aiming in the direction the camera was pointing. Once it’s started (you start aiming your gun or the laser is already pointing), the camera stops reacting at swipes, even though they remain intact, if you keep holding you finger/stylus on the screen until releasing R. Instead, you use Circle Pad for controlling the laser point.
Once you release R, the camera starts reacting at swipes again.
If you shoot and then release R, your character will keep the weapon aiming for a short while once the weapon shooting animation cycle is over. During this period, you can move the camera with swipes and, when you hold R again, your character immediately aims where the camera was pointing at and you’re ready to shoot.
Aiming Speed option
Since the aiming doesn't speed up, we can image some kind of spherical 2D grid where the laser of your gun aims at. Depending on Aiming Speed set in the settings (one of 5 options), it manages the resolution and the point shift length.
“Slow” and “Slowest” options are more for long-range kills, while “Fast” and “Fastest” are more useful for close combat. Since new enemies spawn in if elder ones are dead, killing enemies in the fastest time is necessary, which means you have to kill distant enemies quickly too. So I recommend either sticking with “Default”.
In most cases, you’ll end up making yourself aimed at the head at the moment when your shot results in a critical hit (headshot). For this to do, you aim at the area of enemy’s head, and wait until it crosses your line of fire, or fidget your laser point around to make it point at the head.
Aiming works like that:
Regular one frame Circle Pad horizontal movement (Left, Right) does no effect. Your aim will stay at the same point.
Regular one frame Circle Pad vertical movement (Up or Down) does 1 grid shift.
Diagonal one frame movement (Up-Left, Up-Right, etc.) results in moving 1 grid shift vertically. Horizontal part (Left/Right) is ignored.
Two-frame directional movements (like Left, Up-Left) are difficult to explain. Depending on which spot you were aiming before making that kind of movement, you will get a different amount of shifting. Yeah, if you move your pointer according to input directions, but it won’t usually point where you expect.
At first, I though it’s possible to achieve tiny pointer movements, if you set
“Modifier Scale” to a specific value range in Citra’s Configuration -> Controls, but no. If you find a spot that lets tiny pointer movements, you will get the same movement regardless of Modifier Scale percentage.
But, in general, horizontal-leading movement (like Left, Up-Left) provides a
strong horizontal movement and a
regular vertical movement.
Vertical-leading movement (like Up-Left, Left) provides a
regular vertical and a
regular horizontal movement.
The
perfect algorithm, I think, should work like that:
- you swipe the touch screen,
- you press R, it aims at the head,
- after you shoot, you release R and swipe the camera to the next target
- the shot animation is over, you press R and it aims at the next head.
Unfortunately, I didn't test it. As I mentioned earlier, the camera swiping has inertia, so TAS editor would definitely save a lot of time to make it easier to aim, while taking inertia movements into account. Especially, if you use a machine gun and, hence, you don't always have time for camera to fully finish its swipe.
Critical hits
Like in RE4 and RE5, the game rolls a dice on each frame to decide if you cause a critical hit (headshot) kill, if you pull the trigger at that moment. It’s difficult to say how to manipulate luck with it, but if you’re aiming at a group of enemies, the critical hit always happens at the same moment, no matter which head you’re shooting at.
There’s one specific detail. Critical hit works if you are not moving your gun!
For some reason, when I start moving the gun to the next enemy, knowing that my pointer will still be on the enemy’s head when the gun shoots, I don’t cause a critical hit. It certainly not depends on what part of a head you’re shooting at.
Route
My main focus is any% for regular missions and New game (with no save data).
1) First 3 missions are 1-3, 2-3 and 3-5. Each one unlocks a new set of missions.
Mission 1-3 is killing 5 weak zombies. Character: Chris
Mission 2-3 is killing 25 weak zombies. There are 2 spawn points. Character: Chris or Hunk.
I didn’t test Hunk, but I think, while dealing with multiple enemies on the screen, killing zombies with 2 Hunk’s machine gun shots is faster than waiting for a critical hit for Chris’ pistol.
Mission 3-5 is boss fight with Popokarimu. Character: Hunk.
1.1) Once Mission level 4 is unlocked, we can complete the whole level set
Missions 4-1, 4-2, 4-3, 4-4 and also 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4 are survivals for 2 minutes each, so we can complete them sooner or later. Character: anybody.
- Some useful (or not) skills can be unlocked for B rank: Handgun Technique (4-1), Machine Gun Technique (4-3), Bomber (5-2), Technician (5-3).
- Bomber can be useful in boss battle in 5-5.
- Downside: “Technique” skills’ property profit is unknown (see Question 1 in Misc section).
2)
Mission 4-5 is a survival mission which contains 10 waves, having 180 enemies and 20 boss-like enemies in total. This will take about 6 minutes to complete.
Any% on the other hand, requires sticking with wave 1 until the time runs out. So the mission can be considered time-based too.
2.1)
Mission set 5, as mentioned in 1.1, is also time-based, so it’s up to you when to play it.
3)
Mission 5-5 is killing 15 enemies to make Popokarimu boss appear, and then kill it. Enemies are zealtons and executioners (black). It will be complicated to ignore the later ones.
Character: Krauser (most likely) or Hunk.
It’s interesting if the enemies drop rocket ammo. Can the boss die of 1 rocket without “Giant Killing” skill on? Also, this map provides mines instead of hand granades which might help to damage the boss.
4) Mission set 1 (time-depended)
4.1)
Mission 1-1 is just running by a specific route. When you reach one red glowing marker, the next one becomes active and that’s until the final one.
Character: unknown. Girls might run faster. I don’t think Wesker’s charging-running-kicking special move will save any time. It all requires testing.
4.2)
Mission 1-2 is destroying all barrels around the map. Here you can build your own route. There are red markers, but it’s not necessary to touch them.
Character: Rebecca or Hunk. Machine guns let you spend less time waiting for weapon shooting animations to finish. It’s not clear if Rebecca runs faster than Hunk because she wields a machine gun, not a pistol.
5) Mission set 2 (time- dependent)
5.1)
Mission 2-1 is killing all 15 Majini zombies, meaning you don’t have an infinite crowd to kill remaining zombies easily; you have to look for the final enemy. They are regular enemies. The main obstacle here is finding the spot to spawn enemies quicker. I don’t think the starting spot is good. When a Majini spawns in, it has to climb up the container before you can shoot it.
Character: Wesker.
5.2)
Mission 2-2 is killing all 20 zombies. The conditions are the same as in 2-2.
Character: Wesker.
6) Mission set 3 (time-dependent)
6.1)
Mission 3-1 is killing all 15 Town Majini, 4 of which are scripted Cephalos. There are 2 spots on your way where you can pick up flash granades. It’s interesting if you can kill at least 3 of them by shooting barrels. There are 4 barrels around the map and it’s possible to make all 4 groups be blown by them. Will the enemies then not die and spawn Cephalos instead?
Character: Wesker or Hunk. We can spawn all Cephalos and kill them later. Hunk’s grenade launcher makes it easier, if you shoot them all in one go, not switching weapons back and forth. Throwing flash granades may take not much longer too.
6.2)
Mission 3-2 is killing 10 Town Majini. I don’t think the mission will fail if you don’t kill any enemies with a melee attack, but who knows.
Character: Wesker.
6.3)
Mission 3-3 is killing 20 Town Majini. They seem to spawn infinitely.
Character: Wesker
6.4)
Mission 3-4 is killing all 100 Majini. Last enemies should be looked for.
Character: Wesker or Rebecca. Rebecca’s MP5 has 20% of critical hit rate and the grenade launcher can kill the crowds. Wesker’s weapons are better, but you’ll have to run around collecting pistol ammo.
That’s all.
EX Missions
EX Missions are survival missions (time-based), so you can play them too until the timer runs out.
EX-9 has 15 waves, so it's left for you to run around for 5 minutes.
Misc
Revenge skill is pretty interesting, but you need to drain your health to red level, but unfortunately it takes too much time comparing to the sum of waitings for every headshot during a mission.
Giant Killing skill would also be great to have, but Mission 4-5 survival does not fit into any% goal, only for SS ranks goal. But the skill can save some time on 5-5.
Game information
These sources share almost the same information, but provide it in different forms. It’s not clear, where did they get this data from, especially numeric data. I asked Berserker, the guy who wrote GameFAQs article, about it. He said he didn’t remember it and his active period in RE:M 3D was quite small unlike RE5 and RE6 Mercs mode.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/609524-resident-evil-the-mercenaries-3d/faqs/62693
http://www.biohazardmercenaries.com/forums/index.php?topic=8347.0
http://sephirosuy.blogspot.com/2011/06/rem3d-walkthrough-guide.html
Open questions
1. Is the aiming restricted to 8 directions (Up, Up-Right, Right, Down-Right, Down, Down-Left, Left, Up-Left)? Citra doesn’t have TAS input, but if you move Circle Pad in a custom direction, will the pointer move accordingly?
2. What exactly does “Improve (weapon type) handling” property do in “(Weapon type) Technique” and “Technician” skills?
3. Can the enemies drop rocket ammo when you play as Krauser?
4. Can you deal a critical hit to a Cephalo (parasite)? In RE4 you can instantly kill one of its forms.
